participation." However, there was no
significant correlation between BV204 and AC204.

TABLE 4.4a: Mid 1950s:
National Participation

TABLE 4.4a: Early
1960s: National Participation

Basic
Variable 2.05: Legislative Strength

The extent of a party's representation
in the national legislature is often used as an indicator of
its governmental status, with status being a function of the
proportion of seats held by the party. In reality,
governmental status is not a simple function of legislative
strength, for governments are sometimes formed by coalitions
of parties, and small parties occupying strategic positions
on the ideological spectrum are apt to gain power denied
their larger competitors. Then, too, legislatures differ in
terms of their role in the political system. When power
resides elsewhere, party representation in the legislature
may serve a purpose other than participation in policy
making. These cautions notwithstanding, a party's
legislative strength, interpreted as the proportion of seats
held in the lower house of the legislature--regardless of
its role in the system--is another indicator of governmental
status.

Although it would undoubtedly be
informative to determine party representation in the upper
houses of bicameral legislatures as well as the lower
houses, we opt only for the latter to aid cross-national
comparisons. According to Banks and Textor, the countries of
the world are about equally divided between unicameral and
bicameral legislatures, with federalism almost always
associated with bicameralism (1963, p. 111). Not only are
half the countries without a second chamber, but the
composition of the upper houses is often linked to
structural features of federal states. There is, therefore,
greater variance in selection processes for upper houses in
bicameral systems than for lower houses, which commonly
employ some form of popular election of members--as in most
unicameral legislatures.

Our assessment of party representation
is based on the proportion of seats held by the party in the
years studied. The proportion is based on the number of
years rather than the number of elections at
which seats were decided so that loss of' seats through
by-elections and defections might be more easily handled
and, again, to facilitate cross-national comparisons, where
the number of elections may vary considerably.

Operational
Definition. Legislative strength is expressed
by summing the proportion of seats that the party held in
each year and dividing by the appropriate number of years
for the time period. For parties and legislatures that have
existed continuously during the time period, there is no
difficulty in determining the appropriate number of years.
But there are two methods that represent themselves when
either the party did not participate in the legislature
throughout or the legislature itself did not
exist.

One method is to sum the proportions
of seats that the party held each year during each hall' of
the overall time period and then to divide each sum,
respectively, by the number of years in that subdivision
Another approach is to sum the proportions of seats as above
but then to divide only by the number of years in the
subdivision during which the party was represented or the
legislature operated. Obviously, these methods give
identical results under conditions of continuity, but under
conditions of discontinuity the second method produces both
(I) higher legislative strength scores and (2) lower
legislative instability scores. Thus, if the party operated
for only two years in a seven-year period (or if the
legislature was proscribed for all but two years) and if the
party received 40 percent of the seats when it did get the
chance to contest legislative elections, the party would
receive, under the second scoring procedure, a legislative
strength score of .40 and an instability score of .00, based
only on two years' participation in the
legislature.